Angola
The history of Angola is documented from an archaeological point of view since the Palaeolithic, and through written and oral sources since the middle of the first millennium. This country of Southern Africa was formed as a Portuguese colony, a status it held until 11 November 1975, when it gained independence following a war of liberation and a revolution in the then “metropole”.
Pre-colonial history
Main article: Pre-colonial history of Angola
In Lunda Norte, in Zaire and in Cuangar, stone tools and other implements of Palaeolithic man were found. In the Namib Desert, rock engravings were found. These are the engravings of Chitundo-Hulu, attributed to the ancestors of the San.[1]
In the first five hundred years of the current era, the Bantu populations of Central Africa, who had already mastered iron metallurgy, began a series of migrations to the east and south, which came to be called the Bantu expansion,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] reaching the present-day Angolan territory around the end of the first millennium.[9]
Among these populations, the Kongo in the north stand out; the Ambundu, who occupied the region of the lower Cuanza and the middle Cuango; the Lunda in the northeast, between the Kasai, Luangue-Lucala and Lungué-Bungo rivers; and the Ovimbundu of the Amboim and Central Angola plateaus.[9][10]
The arrival of the Portuguese
The Portuguese, under the command of Diogo Cão, during the reign of King John II, reached the Zaire in 1482, establishing an alliance with the Kingdom of Kongo, which dominated the whole region.[9] From the 1490s, with the creation of the colony of São Tomé and, later, of Brazil, Portugal began to acquire slaves from Kongo for the plantations, marking the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade.[10]
During the reign of Afonso I of Kongo, relations with Portugal reached their peak, with strong cultural and economic exchange, but these relations deteriorated under his successors and attempts to establish relations with the Kingdom of Ndongo, further south, were always disastrous. Thus, in 1571, Sebastian I of Portugal granted Paulo Dias de Novais a charter of donation giving him the title of “Governor and Captain-Major of the Kingdom of Sebastian in the Conquest of Ethiopia”, starting the colonization of Angola.[9]
Colonization of Angola
Main article: Colonization of Angola
The first governor of Angola, Paulo Dias de Novais, sought to delimit this vast territory and exploit its natural resources, in particular the silver mines he had heard of. Penetration into the interior was very limited. In 1576 they founded São Paulo da Assunção de Luanda, the present-day city of Luanda. Angola quickly became the main supplier of slaves to the sugar cane plantations of Brazil.
During the Philippine occupation of Portugal (1580–1640), the Dutch tried to dispossess the Portuguese of this region, occupying a large part of the coast (Benguela, Santo António do Zaire, the mouths of the Bengo and Cuanza). In 1648, Portuguese (Luso-Brazilian) troops expelled the Dutch, making it possible to resume the trade routes (essentially the slave traffic) between Salvador and Rio de Janeiro and Luanda.